Sierra Club Meeting Tonight "VISION FOR A SUSTAINABLE CHATTANOOGA"

September Meeting: Monday, September 27, 7 p.m.,

at Green Spaces, 63 E. Main Street, Chattanooga TN 37408.

features Dave Crockett, Chattanooga Sustainability Office Director  

You're invited to come meet the Director of Chattanooga's Office of Sustainability. Hear the Future of Sustainability for Chattanooga. Ask Questions. Bring Your Ideas! David Crockett, Chattanooga's Green Frontiersman is a three-term Chattanooga city councilman, former chairman of the council, and President of the Chattanooga Institute for Sustainability, and will present the audience with an overview of what challenges we face, what progress has been made, and what his vision is for a newer, greener Chattanooga. According to Crockett, "The issue of sustainability has become our central strategy for everything."

Of special interest to Students of Interior Design:

A major initiative of the Office of Sustainability includes establishing an energy office to audit and retrofit city buildings.  Another major project that Crockett will work on is the "No Roof Left Unused" initiative, which encourages companies to install green roofs, solar systems or micro wind turbines on rooftops.

Plan to attend and address any and all questions to Chattanooga's Green Frontiersman, Dave Crockett!

Lucy House Carpet Tile Back Corner Perspective


The corner of the Lucy House by the Rural Studio.  This design was originally for an extremely wealthy Long Island Family where the project did not work out. To prove a point about 'high design' being affordable, Mockbee took this design and with a shift to reused materials like old carpet samples (the stacked walls in the photo) he made an affordable house in Alabama for a family in poverty.

Not far away in Georgia is one of the 'carpet centers' of the US, so the students got the tiles and brought them over to create wall, with vertical rods through the carpet, and a bond beam at the top to hold the wall together.

It's a fantastic design, learn more here: www.cadc.auburn.edu/soa/rural-studio

TEXTILES in the NEWS

Big News in TEXTILES: Obama’s Oval Office Redo


The new wheat, cream and blue oval-shaped rug made and donated by the Scott Group, an American carpet manufacturer headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan is made of    25 percent recycled wool.  The rug has the Presidential seal in the center and historical quotes of meaning to President Obama around the border. The five historical quotes for the rug are:

"The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself"                                        Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Towards Justice"      Martin Luther King Jr.

"Government of the People, By the People, For the People"                      Abraham Lincoln

"No Problem of Human Destiny is Beyond Human Beings"                        John F. Kennedy

"The Welfare of Each of Us is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us"

                                                                                                               Theodore Roosevelt

The couches in the Oval Office were custom-made in New York. The fabric, a light brown cotton with red, white and blue threads running through it, was woven in Pennsylvania. The two mahogany armchairs in front of the fireplace, previously used by President George W. Bush, were reupholstered with a caramel-colored leather. The President's brown leather desk chair was produced in New York.

http://blog.utc.edu/news/2010/08/interior-design-student-awarded-scholarship/

A former practicing attorney studying for a new career has been awarded a prestigious and valuable scholarship to cover all expenses of her senior year at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  Tidwell is the third consecutive UTC student to be awarded the Angelo Donghia Scholarship.


Dalton, Georgia, resident Cindy Tidwell is one of 12 interior design students from across the US to be selected for the Angelo Donghia Foundation Award. Her selection was based on a juried competition of portfolio submissions. 




Rooftop Terrace CAD Rendering


Tidwell, who celebrates her 40th birthday as fall semester begins, said the project she entered was a combination of commercial and residential—a hypothetical art gallery with a residence for the owners (both artists) on two floors above the business. Green design was an important element in her project. 

“I interviewed Chattanooga artists Patricia and Rey D’Alfonso in Chattanooga for my ‘hypothetical’ artists so that I could get a sense of what a client would want,” Tidwell said. “They had a lot of input about the style of furniture they like and their needs for a residence and gallery space. They even made requests to accommodate their two bull mastiffs which I was able to incorporate into the design. Knowing their cultural backgrounds and their tastes made it easy to choose colors and select furnishings for the project. I used vibrant colors to reflect their rich cultural heritage (Patricia is from Venezuela and Rey defected from Cuba) and selected additional furnishings to compliment the classic pieces they already own.” 

Planning, programming, sketches, AutoCad (computer-aided design) drawings, floor plans and perspectives were included in Tidwell’s project. “After taking the AutoCAD courses as juniors most students do not want to go back to hand drafting projects. It saves so much time and gives you a lot of flexibility to  make changes to projects,” Tidwell said. “It's a common misconception that only architects can draft and draw in AutoCAD. As design students we get a lot of training related to space planning, architectural drafting, codes compliance, materials, etc. There is much more to the program than just learning to select paint colors and the right fabrics.”

As a big fan of Home and Garden TV (HGTV), Tidwell quickly began to understand there is a difference between a thirty-minute redesign show and the reality of the planning and execution of a remodel or new construction project. Some projects take a month and students may spend 100-150 hours on one project. Tidwell’s Materials class participated in the redesign of the UTC Media Center.

The jury for the 2010 awards included Laura Bohn of Laura Bohn Design Associates, Inc., Doris Athenios, Art & Antiques Editor of Traditional Home, and Doretta Sperduto, Decorating Director of House Beautiful.